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  • 2018-06-07 (xsd:date)
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  • Did a Tennessee Hardware Store Put Up a 'No Gays Allowed' Sign? (en)
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  • The phrase no gays allowed was one of the top ten trending topics on Twitter on the morning of 7 June 2018, a few days after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Colorado bakery that had refused to bake a cake for a gay wedding. Those who clicked on this topic were greeted with a link to a USA Today article about a Tennessee hardware called Amyx Hardware and its policy barring gay people from shopping at the store. Many thought that the story was new because it was erroneously dated June 2018 rather than July 2015, when the story actually first appeared: Although it's unclear what caused the erroneous date (it's possible that USA Today republished the article and the wrong date was scraped by Twitter), it confused many readers who thought that a recent Supreme Court decision had already created a slippery slope for businesses to more easily discriminate: Amyx Hardware initially put up its no gays allowed sign soon after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage. A few days later, the store added a sign which further explained the policy: The No Gays Allowed sign has been displayed at Amyx Hardware for the past three years. As of this writing, it is still on display on the shop's front door: The Tennessee store has never shied away from expressing its views. The store's Twitter feed is full of homophobic messages, the featured image on the store's web site asks visitors to choose between the Christian flag and the American one, they have sold homophobic merchandise, and the profile picture of the store's Twitter profile still shows, as of this writing, the owner of the store posing next to the now-infamous sign: So why is this sign back in the news three years later? On 4 June 2018, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Colorado bakery that refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple: Interest in the store and its anti-gay policy was reignited when Amyx Hardware celebrated the decision on social media. The local Tennessee outlet WBIR interviewed Jeff Amyx in the wake of the Supreme Court's June 2018 Masterpiece Cakeshop decision: (en)
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